Patients on a medication therapy regimen may take multiple medications, have multiple medical providers and/or have multiple medical conditions. In many cases, medication information, medical provider information and medical condition information are of particular medical importance in managing a patient's medication therapy regimen. For example, drug-drug interactions may occur in patients taking multiple prescription drugs and are the result of one or more drugs interacting with, or interfering with, another drug or set of drugs, thereby resulting in, for example, decreased efficacy, toxicity, etc. Drug-disease interactions result when a medication intended for treatment of one disease is in conflict with the treatment of a different disease in the same patient. Avoiding drug conflicts, such as drug-drug, drug-illness and drug-age interactions, increases the safety and efficacy of prescription drugs. Duplication of a drug or class of drugs may result in an overdose. In other cases, failure to adhere to a medication therapy regimen may adversely affect the patient's health.
In addition to medical importance, medication information and medical condition information are important from an efficiency perspective. For example, duplication of a medication may result in an increased cost without any additional medical benefit, as well as a potential medical disadvantage. In some cases, medications may be replaced or combined by prescribing an alternative medication that has an improved medical effect and/or may also result in decreased cost to the patient. Still further, many patients may not be well-versed or fully versed in the details regarding a medication prescription, including major or minor side effects, storage instructions, dosage/ingestion instructions, reasons for taking the medication, a description of the medication, etc. Accordingly, consultation with the patient about the medication prescription may be particularly useful, and in some cases may be of particular importance to the welfare of the patient.
In some cases, a consultation with the patient may be required, either by government or industry regulations, due to the importance of the consultation (e.g., identified adverse health risk, a potential replacement medication, etc.) or due to the professional opinion of the pharmacist. In such situations, the patient should not be permitted to fill or refill a medication prescription without first consulting with a pharmacist or other qualified pharmaceutical professional. In other situations, consultation may not be required, but may be requested by the patient.
However, patients often use different pharmacists, or pharmacies, to fill their prescriptions, such that data relating to the patient's medication prescription is provided by disparate data sources (e.g., different pharmacies). As a result, it may be difficult for any one pharmacist or other qualified professional to provide a comprehensive consultation to the patient. As a result, in many instances the patient and/or the patient's pharmacist is not fully apprised of the patient's medication prescription and associated information. Even if the information is available, it may be difficult for the pharmacist to remember or access all of the patient's information in order to provide a comprehensive consultation.
In other instances, a pharmacist may not be readily available to provide a consultation, which may result in denying the patient of needed medication due to a consultation requirement, even if only temporary. For example, a pharmacy's store hours or a pharmacist's hours may not coincide with the patient attempt to fill or refill a medication prescription. Alternatively, a pharmacist or other professional qualified to perform the consultation may not conveniently reside or be employed in the patient's geographic location. In such instances, a pharmacist at another location may be available to provide the consultation, but due to the patient's mobility and/or the distance between the geographic locations, consultation is impractical and the pharmacist may not have ready access to the patient's medication prescription information.